Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Erwin visits the farm

When I was a kid we had cows. Milk cows and meat cows. We also had chickens, pigs, ducks, guineas, and assorted dogs and cats. As you know if you have lots of animals you also have logs of poop. It is everywhere on a farm. If you are at a farm you know it can be disastrous to walk in a straight line. We had boot cleaners at the entrance to every house. You have to build an entire house procedure regarding clean boots.The worst is the cows. Cows view the entire world as a bathroom. They can lay a minefield in a pasture that cannot be rivaled. Nothing is worse that to be walking through a pasture in the early morning darkens, slip and fall into one of these craftily laid mines.

My cousin Erwin, who has been mentioned here before, came each summer to spend a week with us. He was from the city and his mom thought it was good for him to see how farm kids lived. I assume to convince him to study hard and go to college and escape a life of farming.

This particular visit was during my 13th year in late July. The forth of July was over and my firework supply was running low. I had blown up everything that an M80 could blow up. Back in those days you could still buy M80 fireworks. An M80 is ¼ of a stick of dynamite. Explosives were a great toy for a kid like me; I still wonder why they illegalized them shortly after the Erwin incident. Erwin arrived and my mom told him to go out in the yard, I was out there playing. For reference I viewed Erwin as a large fat tick embedded on my backside for one week per year. I had to take him everywhere. That being said Erwin was a great target.

On the farm I grew up on we had many fruit trees. We had three large pear trees that provided a large amount of ammunition, rotten pears. When you hit someone with a rotten pear they explode all over them. Erwin for all his shortcomings provided me with one of the best moving targets a kid like me could ask for. Erwin, also being larger than I, provided me with plenty of beatings on the odd chance that he could catch me.

On this particular day I was in the pasture, Erwin walked up and I said “hey” he said “hey”.He asked me what I had in my hand.I said “a rotten pear”.Erwin said, “What are you doing to it”. I said “putting a M80 in it”.He said, “why and then said OH and started running,I lit the fuse and threw it. At the same moment he slipped in a huge cow pie and began hovering horizontally above it as the rotten pear slipped from my hand and landed in the cow pie. Then Erwin landed on top of the pear and the M80 in the huge cow pie.Erwin’s mom came out of our house at that moment and said “Erwin come say goodbye”.Erwin said *#@*&%#The M80 went off with a loud WHUMP. Erwin bounced up 2 feet in the air covered with poop some of which was cow.He had a hole in his pants and a murderous look on his face. It was a long rest of the day for young Bo Snagley.Needless to say I received several beatings for that stunt, but it was worth it.